


Swoon

by draculard



Series: Comfortween [6]
Category: Star Wars: Thrawn Series - Timothy Zahn (2017)
Genre: Fainting, First Kiss, Humor and Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Art Theft, M/M, Off-screen Art Heists, vasovagal syncope
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-06
Updated: 2020-10-06
Packaged: 2021-03-08 08:34:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,580
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26848996
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/draculard/pseuds/draculard
Summary: Eli's got two surprises for Thrawn.What could go wrong?
Relationships: Thrawn | Mitth'raw'nuruodo/Eli Vanto
Series: Comfortween [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1946224
Comments: 10
Kudos: 90
Collections: Comfortween 2020





	Swoon

“Close your eyes first, sir,” Eli said.

Thrawn didn’t close his eyes. He folded his hands and rested his chin on them, studying Eli intensely. “Is this a human custom?” he asked evenly. 

“Yes,” said Eli. “You give someone a surprise, and you tell them to close their eyes first. It builds suspense.”

Thrawn’s eyes narrowed. He looked over Eli’s shoulder at the makeshift sleeping space in his aft bridge office, where he had been forbidden to go. “I do not see the appeal,” he said. “What have you brought me?”

“They don’t do surprises where you come from, sir?” asked Eli.

“Of course they do,” said Thrawn, still studying his bedroom door as if looking for a heat signature. “Surprise attacks.”

Eli huffed out a sigh. “This isn’t an attack, sir, it’s a _pleasant_ surprise. You’ll like it. Trust me.”

Thrawn’s face was unreadable. After a long moment, he laid his hands flat against his desk and stood, taking a few steps closer to the wall. “I trust you,” he said.

Eli couldn’t help but notice that Thrawn had casually placed himself in a position where he could easily reach for the ceremonial weapons hung on his wall or, if he so chose, shelter from an attack behind his desk. 

“Will you close your eyes, then?” Eli asked.

“Certainly,” said Thrawn. He closed his eyes lightly, and simultaneously angled his chin downward to protect his throat. With a sigh, Eli stepped closer to him, setting the surprise aside entirely for the moment. He could see the almost unnoticeable tension rippling through Thrawn as Eli silently approached him; it was all in Thrawn’s breathing pattern and the subtle twitching of his eyes beneath the lids.

When they were almost chest-to-chest, Eli put his hand on Thrawn’s shoulder, checking to make sure his eyes stayed closed.

“This isn’t the surprise,” he warned him.

Thrawn’s eyelids twitched, but didn’t open. He gave a nod of understanding.

When Eli leaned up to kiss him, Thrawn stayed utterly still, not breathing and not kissing Eli back. His lips were soft and warm, but didn’t part beneath Eli’s. When Eli pulled away, Thrawn swayed forward, as if trying to follow him, and then went still again.

“That _wasn’t_ the surprise?” Thrawn said, squeezing his eyes more tightly closed.

“No,” said Eli, trying to hide a smile. “Why? Were you surprised?”

Thrawn gave an exasperated-sounding huff and his cheeks seemed to turn a darker shade of blue, but he didn’t answer. 

“Does that mean you were expecting it?” asked Eli, amused. He kept his hands on Thrawn’s chest, refusing to move away. Thrawn hesitated, clearly wishing he could open his eyes and just as clearly refraining.

“Commander Vanto,” he said haltingly, “I was under the impression that in general, and on Lysatra in specific… to touch one’s lips to another being’s is seen as a … romantic gesture.”

Eli definitely couldn’t hide his smile now, but he supposed it didn’t matter, since Thrawn’s eyes were still closed. “Oh, did you think so?” he said lightly, watching Thrawn frown in confusion. “That’s interesting.” 

The frown only grew deeper as Eli moved away. He walked backward to Thrawn’s living quarters, keeping his gaze on Thrawn the entire time to make sure he didn’t open his eyes. Of course, knowing Thrawn, he could probably tell from the cadence of Eli’s footfalls that he hadn’t turned around, and was just waiting for the right moment to disobey.

Oh, well. At the door, Eli turned around and entered the bedroom, stepping sideways to face the packages he’d had delivered while Thrawn was on the bridge. He picked them up one by one, moving them slowly and carefully to the aft bridge office. He arranged each one the same way they’d been when he first found them, taking care to preserve the original owner’s presentation.

When they were all in position, he checked Thrawn’s eyes once again — still closed — and then removed the protective sheets of flimsi from each frame. He could see Thrawn’s nose wrinkling in thought at the sound of flimsi being torn and wadded up in front of him.

With everything ready to go, Eli only hesitated one moment longer — to figure out where he wanted to stand. Eventually, he slid behind the surprises, so he would have a perfect view of Thrawn’s face when he opened his eyes.

Then, swallowing past his nervousness, Eli smiled and said, “Okay. Open your eyes.”

Thrawn opened his eyes. He blinked, his expression not changing as he took in the paintings before him. Eli watched the column of his throat shift as he swallowed, then watched Thrawn’s tongue dart out to wet his lips.

“Ah…” said Thrawn, sounding dazed. “This…”

“All original,” Eli told him proudly. “Guess where I got them.”

Thrawn only blinked, mutely shaking his head.

“Guess,” Eli told him again, more insistently.

“They…” Thrawn’s fingers twitched, as if he were stopping himself from stepping forward and touching the paintings. “They look like…”

Eli couldn’t hold it back anymore. He grinned widely, his fingers closing around the frame of the painting in front of him. “They’re all taken directly from Warlord Trin Gil La’s palace,” he said.

Thrawn didn’t react. Eli could see his chest moving up and down in short, slow breaths. “Trin Gil La,” he repeated tonelessly. “We…”

“The one we’re tracking,” said Eli, his amusement and pride giving way to something like concern.

“Yes, of course,” said Thrawn weakly, nodding. “Yes. Trin Gil La.”

“Yeah,” said Eli, frowning. He studied Thrawn for a moment, then stepped around the paintings. “Are you o—”

Thrawn’s knees gave out before Eli could finish the sentence. He reached out to catch himself on the corner of the desk as he fell, but his hand just slid uselessly over the durasteel and he dropped to the floor with a resounding crash. Eli scrambled forward, too late to catch Thrawn or prevent his head from hitting the desk.

He dropped to his knees at Thrawn’s side and found his eyes closed again, his face slack with unconsciousness. 

“ _Fuck_ ,” Eli hissed. He touched Thrawn’s hair gently, feeling his skull for any wounds, and was still doing so when Thrawn’s eyes fluttered open a moment later. “ _Fuck_ , Thrawn,” Eli said, edging back a little as Thrawn raised a hand to the back of his own head, looking dazed. “Did you just _faint_?”

Thrawn blinked up at him; he was pale and sweating, but hardly seemed to notice. “Commander Vanto,” he said. He lifted his head a little, caught sight of the paintings, and seemed almost to swoon again. His eyes drifted closed, and Eli was about to shake him awake again when Thrawn gave a soft grunt and sat up on his own. 

“You _fainted_ ,” said Eli, equal parts horrified and stunned.

“Warlord Trin Gil La’s _personal_ collection,” Thrawn murmured, his eyes on the paintings. He accepted Eli’s support without even seeming to notice it, leaning against his chest when Eli tugged him closer. 

“Have you not eaten today?” asked Eli, studying Thrawn intensely. “Are you injured? Why the hell did you faint?”

Thrawn blinked, not taking his eyes off the paintings. “I would assume there was a sudden change in my blood pressure or a drop in my heart rate,” he said absently. “Vasovagal syncope, Commander. Where did you _get_ these?”

“Vaso-what?” Eli countered. He grabbed Thrawn by the upper arm and forced him to turn and look Eli in the eye. “What are you talking about?”

Thrawn’s eyes darted down to his lips, then swiveled back to the paintings. “Vasovagal syncope,” he repeated. “It’s — do you need a Sy Bisti translation?”

“Do _I_ need—?!”

Accepting this as the denial it was, Thrawn said, “It simply means a change in blood pressure which leads to fainting. Commonly triggered by stress.” He pulled away from Eli a little, running a hand through his sweat-dampened hair. “The sight of blood, for example,” he said. “Or long periods of standing.”

Neither of which applied here, Eli thought. Or, really, to any point in his life where he'd known Thrawn. He studied Thrawn with a frown. Finally, Thrawn looked away from the paintings, took in Eli’s frown and said, almost sounding irritated, “Or excitement.”

There was a beat of silence.

“Don’t look so pleased about it,” said Thrawn roughly. 

“I’m not,” said Eli, unable to hide his grin. “But did you faint _out of excitement_ because I kissed you or was it all because of the paintings? Be honest.”

“The—” Thrawn started to gesture at the paintings, then turned to Eli again with narrowed eyes. “You told me the kiss was not romantic,” he said, a note of accusation in his voice.

“ _Did_ I tell you that?” asked Eli innocently.

“You implied it,” said Thrawn, sitting up a bit straighter, his eyes wide.

“So does that mean the kiss _was_ a factor, or not?” asked Eli, now grinning almost manically.

There was a long silence. Thrawn studied Eli’s face, both of them sitting on the floor with the warlord’s paintings not far away. Eli endured the stare good-naturedly, trying not to feel smug.

When Thrawn didn’t answer him, he softened his smile a little and said, “We should try again, just to make sure. We don’t want you fainting every time I kiss you, after all.”

Thrawn scoffed.

He was still looking at the paintings when Eli grabbed him by the lapels and pulled him in for another kiss.


End file.
